With the advent of digital cameras, consumers capture picture memories and subsequently store them either on their own personal computers or by utilizing one of a number of online Internet photographic service sites (e.g., OFOTO™, or Kodak Picture Center Online™) which offer storage. At the same time the number of images captured by digital camera has increased, the percentage of these images being printed has decreased. This is due to many reasons, for example consumers selecting only their very best images to be printed, or the printing solutions themselves being too difficult to use for all except the most experienced computer users.
The options available for obtaining prints from a digital camera include printing at home, which can be very challenging, and which sometimes produces less than desirable quality prints. In addition, the materials needed for home photo printing (typically inkjet cartridges and photo-quality print paper) can be quite expensive.
Consumers can also order hard copy prints and other image products online from an Internet photographic service (e.g. OFOTO™) site where their images are stored, but this, too, involves many steps including the use of multiple user interface screens. Typically, obtaining prints from a remote photographic service site requires first connecting to the site and then uploading the images to the user's account. Uploading can be a slow and cumbersome process, especially if a narrow band-width dial-up connection to the Internet is used. To place a print order, a user must remain connected to the service site while carrying out a number of steps to specify which images are to be printed, and the quantities desired. This process can be slow even when a broad-band connection to the Internet is available, especially when traffic on the service site is high. The user must progress through several screens and often there is wait time for the next screen to appear. Finally, an e-commerce step must be carried out to arrange payment, typically involving a transaction such as the entry of the credit-card which then requires a wait for confirmation of validity.
The social exchange of hard copy prints as a means of sharing pictures has also always been popular. When using film for image capture, a convenient means for sharing prints was employed by many consumers when they selected the option of getting two sets of prints from a photo processing service. The consumer would keep one copy of a print, while the second copy was used for sharing with family and friends. Now, because of the problems previously mentioned with obtaining prints from digital cameras, the sharing of pictures by means of hard copy prints from digital cameras has decreased. And no matter the source of the hard copy print (from film or digital), there is extra work associated with sharing by sending prints by mail. Envelopes have to be addressed and stamped, notes written, and a trip to the post office must be made. Prints ordered remotely from a photographic service site may be shipped to an address of recipient for sharing, but the complexity of this multi-step task has already been described.
A new means of social sharing of images enabled by digital technology has recently emerged. So-called electronic sharing of images often involves the e-mailing of a digital image file as an attachment or the posting of images to a personal website or a photo website such as Ofoto™. While this is an increasingly popular means of sharing images, it, too, can be complex, requiring multiple steps. In sharing via a website, a URL must first be supplied to the recipient who must, in turn, access the website in order to view the images. When emailing images, the sharer must also decide what size digital image to share (e.g., a smaller size to facilitate transfer but suitable for display only, or a larger size for printing but slower to transfer) and understand how to resize the image appropriately if resizing is needed.
Finally, if a consumer wishes to share the same set of images using email and prints, it is necessary to follow two distinct, multi-step workflows.
Thus there is a need to provide a greatly simplified means for consumers to share digital images with friends and family by electronic sharing, or by means of hard copy prints, and also to simplify the ordering of image-related goods or services on-line.